Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday, So once again
Speaker 1: we venture into the vault to finish up our two
Speaker 1: parter on strange Ice. This episode originally published two one,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. Let's dive right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 3: part two of our look at Strange Ice. Now, initially
Speaker 3: we didn't know this was going to be a two
Speaker 3: part series. Last time, we looked at odd ice formations
Speaker 3: that can occur on Earth, such as the main one
Speaker 3: I looked at was this thing called nieves penitentes or
Speaker 3: just penitentes, which are these very strange sort of blades
Speaker 3: or spikes or pinnacles of ice that you can sometimes
Speaker 3: find in high mountain ranges, especially in the dry Andies.
Speaker 3: And we looked at a historical anecdote of Charles Darwin
Speaker 3: trekking across the Andes and coming across a field of
Speaker 3: these things, one that had a horse frozen inside it.
Speaker 3: But we also looked at ice formations such as ball ice,
Speaker 3: candle ice, rotten ice, and a lot of other creepy, interesting,
Speaker 3: physically counterintuitive ways that ice can form or decompose. And
Speaker 3: so we're coming back today to talk some more about
Speaker 3: strange ice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess this episode's kind of a release valve
Speaker 1: from the last episode. There were a number of threads
Speaker 1: that had come up in our research that we just
Speaker 1: had to continue to pursue. So some of these are
Speaker 1: definitely still going to deal with direct examples of ice
Speaker 1: manifesting in a way that we might think of as weird,
Speaker 1: behaving in a way that some people might think of
Speaker 1: as weird. But we'll also get into some some I
Speaker 1: thought very fascinating and haunting folk traditions concerning the ice.
Speaker 3: All right, what have you got, Rob.
Speaker 1: So in the last episode we discussed mostly in passing
Speaker 1: the dangers of ice, specifically coastal sea ice and any
Speaker 1: sort of icy environment that humans will attempt to traverse
Speaker 1: or in any way exploit for hunting, fishing, recreation, scientific purposes. Specifically,
Speaker 1: thinking about rotten ice, you know, the idea that it's
Speaker 1: just not safe to venture upon. And I imagine we
Speaker 1: have plenty of listeners out there who grew up in
Speaker 1: places with icy environments who can attest to the dangers
Speaker 1: of ice that. I mean, there's just so many ways
Speaker 1: that it can potentially be dangerous. There's, of course, you
Speaker 1: know the fact that ice can be slippery, You can fall,
Speaker 1: and if you fall on ice, it is hard, and
Speaker 1: you know that can hurt you as well. Then you
Speaker 1: get into areas where ice may give way, It may
Speaker 1: plunge us into freezing water, It may plunge us into
Speaker 1: hollow areas where the water is drained out, and so forth.
Speaker 1: There are so many ways that ice can pose a danger.
Speaker 1: Ice can also just be physically heavy as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the danger of plunging through ice into a hazard
Speaker 3: below is not only the case on say like a
Speaker 3: frozen pond or lake or something. But think about what
Speaker 3: happened to that horse that Charles Darwin came across. We
Speaker 3: don't know, but he speculated, well, maybe when the snow
Speaker 3: was packed higher, it somehow like fell into a hole
Speaker 3: or crevasse in the ice and then and then died
Speaker 3: like that, and then the rest of it sublimated away
Speaker 3: around it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you don't even have to have really extreme
Speaker 1: environments for potentially dangerous examples of this from occurring. Like
Speaker 1: I remember as a kid encountering situations where you'd have
Speaker 1: like a bog or you know, a marshy area, and
Speaker 1: you would have a situation where you would have this
Speaker 1: sort of ice cap on top, and I guess like
Speaker 1: the water drained down during the melting, and so you'd
Speaker 1: have this this thin layer of ice on and you
Speaker 1: could fall down through it potentially or climb down through
Speaker 1: it and play in it as a child, And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess that's one of the things that we'll be
Speaker 1: getting into here, is like ice creates unique environments that,
Speaker 1: especially to a child, can be as intriguing as they
Speaker 1: are potentially hazardous.
Speaker 3: I'm just thinking now about little rob climbing down through
Speaker 3: the ice to play in the bog. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was part of my childhood. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it should come as no surprise that there are
Speaker 1: traditional tales and folk traditions seemingly meant to keep children
Speaker 1: away from ice, Because again, ice is great fun, children
Speaker 1: are curious, and since time out of Mind parents have
Speaker 1: invented and passed down tales of perhaps more embodied threats
Speaker 1: monsters to scare children away from potentially dangerous environments. Now
Speaker 1: this may ring a bell because we discussed one of
Speaker 1: these on the podcast a few years back. This would
Speaker 1: be Jenny green Teeth, a river hag of English folklore,
Speaker 1: understood as a kind of nursery boogie to keep children
Speaker 1: away from the water's edge, bogie rather not boogie.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think Jenny could be used to warn children
Speaker 3: of the dangers of water in multiple environments. But the
Speaker 3: one that I remember being really salient was like in
Speaker 3: certain regions of England, there might be places where there
Speaker 3: were holes or pits in the ground, maybe marl pits
Speaker 3: or something like that, that had been hollowed out and
Speaker 3: then filled in with water. And sometimes this water would
Speaker 3: have coverings of like algae or plant matter or something
Speaker 3: on top of it that would just make it look
Speaker 3: very green, make it look like it was just you know,
Speaker 3: a continuation of the grass almost yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, look to your point. You know,
Speaker 1: once you have a folk creation like this, it can
Speaker 1: be deployed in various ways. It can sort of take
Speaker 1: on different meanings and different stressors in different stories. But
Speaker 1: there are many variations on this theme in global traditions
Speaker 1: where there's some sort of supernatural being it is associated
Speaker 1: with the water and the dangers of the water, especially
Speaker 1: for young children. The Japanese Kappa is one that we've
Speaker 1: also discussed in the past. This sometimes takes on these connotations,
Speaker 1: and then of course this is another thing we're discussed
Speaker 1: in the show before. There's of course the nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: three British public information film Lonely Water, also known as
Speaker 1: the Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water, featuring the voice
Speaker 1: of Donald Pleasance. This very much carries on the tradition here,
Speaker 1: and it's often discussed as something that traumatized an entire
Speaker 1: generation of British children.
Speaker 3: It sounds like it worked. I mean, are you going
Speaker 3: to go play in the flooded mind pits now?
Speaker 1: Yeah? You know. It's a complicated topic though, the use
Speaker 1: of boogiemen and boogie women, I guess to frightened children.
Speaker 1: I remember reading about some of the works of Francisco
Speaker 1: Goya in which he was criticizing this and and like
Speaker 1: tying in this whole idea that like, by having parents
Speaker 1: that invoke supernatural threats to keep children in line, they're
Speaker 1: not only potentially protecting their child from these threats, but
Speaker 1: they're also instilling supernatural belief at an early age that
Speaker 1: then you know, matures and becomes these other modes of
Speaker 1: supernatural belief that to some may be seen as more
Speaker 1: harmful in their adulthood.
Speaker 3: So, like his idea is, if you teach a child
Speaker 3: to fear spectral dangers, even if it's useful in keeping
Speaker 3: them away from a real physical danger in childhood, maybe
Speaker 3: they just grow up to continue to project spectral dangers
Speaker 3: that are not necessary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe that's the argument. Though. Of course this
Speaker 1: is a complicated issue, so you know, obviously it's there
Speaker 1: are a lot of a lot of ins and outs here,
Speaker 1: so I don't want to simplify it too much. But
Speaker 1: it's interesting to think about, like what is mean when
Speaker 1: you introduce something like this? What does it mean when
Speaker 1: you introduces something that's not even tied to scaring children
Speaker 1: so much, like something like a Santa Claus or Easter bunny?
Speaker 1: You know what effect does that have? And of course
Speaker 1: you know a lot has been written and continues to
Speaker 1: be written and said about this. So anyway, given all
Speaker 1: of this, it again should comes no surprise that there
Speaker 1: are traditions that involve creating supernatural entities or monstrous entities
Speaker 1: that are associated with the dangers of ice and keeping
Speaker 1: children away from the ice. So I want to turn
Speaker 1: to a couple of these from Native American First Nations traditions.
Speaker 1: The first of these is the Abo dampkin. This. I
Speaker 1: was reading about this in the Dictionary of Native American
Speaker 1: Mythology by Sam D. Gill and Irene F. Sullivan. This
Speaker 1: is apparently an entity in the traditions of the Malaset
Speaker 1: and Passimaquadi people in what is now the Canadian province
Speaker 1: of New Brunswick and the US state of Maine. The
Speaker 1: authors here describe it as a boogie monster with long
Speaker 1: hair and huge teeth. Quote. Fear of him keeps small
Speaker 1: children from straying on thin, newly frozen ice in the
Speaker 1: winter and unguarded beaches in the summer.
Speaker 3: Oh so is this creature in the water?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, I was looking for more information on this
Speaker 1: and according to Native languages as Native hyphen Languages dot org,
Speaker 1: it is also sometimes sometimes described as a fanged sea serpent,
Speaker 1: sometimes with like long red hair, and some accounts say
Speaker 1: that it might have once been a human woman and
Speaker 1: was transformed into this state. And despite the fact that
Speaker 1: some Western interpretations apparently have classified this is a kind
Speaker 1: of vampire. It is actually better thought of as a
Speaker 1: sea monster. So yeah, this would be something that dwells
Speaker 1: within the water. Now. Another one that I was reading
Speaker 1: about this one is also a number of review may
Speaker 1: be familiar with, is the Qualipeluit. This is an entity
Speaker 1: in the traditions of the Inuit, and there's an excellent
Speaker 1: ride up about it on the Kikwitani Inuit Association's Inuit
Speaker 1: Myths and Legends website. That's Inuit Myths dot Com, which
Speaker 1: features some just haunting artwork and also text that is
Speaker 1: available in both English and Inuit. Joe I included one
Speaker 1: of these images from the website here that is just
Speaker 1: absolutely terrifying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, extremely Oh no, and it's like snatching a baby.
Speaker 1: That's what they do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The website describes
Speaker 1: them as scaly marine humanoids that reek of sulfur, and yeah,
Speaker 1: they snatch children. They prey on children who play alone
Speaker 1: on the beach or get too close to breaking ice.
Speaker 1: They may also feature pouches on their back to stuff
Speaker 1: children in. I couldn't tell. It seemed ambiguous based on
Speaker 1: the entry and based on the illustrations. There are a
Speaker 1: couple of additional illustrations on the website whether this pouch
Speaker 1: is in their clothing or if this is a pouch
Speaker 1: in their body. Here's a haunting excerpt from the inuitens
Speaker 1: dot com website quote. Usually the qualipi luit jump out
Speaker 1: of the water and grab children without any warning. Sometimes, however,
Speaker 1: you can hear them knocking under the ice. Some elders
Speaker 1: have said that if the ocean begins to become wavy
Speaker 1: in an area, or steam begins to rise from the ocean,
Speaker 1: a qualipiluit might be hiding underneath the water.
Speaker 3: This one is so scary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I love the idea that of one
Speaker 1: of these creatures underneath the ice, like tapping or knocking
Speaker 1: at it, especially.
Speaker 3: Especially because if you ever do have experiences out on
Speaker 3: ice over a frozen body of water, you can hear
Speaker 3: strange sounds emanating from below.
Speaker 1: That's right, right, And one of the things we'll get
Speaker 1: into your hair in a bit is things that can
Speaker 1: suddenly occur that also have sounds regarding the ice, especially
Speaker 1: the ice close to the shore. So the direct line
Speaker 1: was not made between these two topics and the material
Speaker 1: I was looking at, But I can't help but think
Speaker 1: about it now that I've researched it a little bit.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I highly recommend inuitmths dot com, the website
Speaker 1: futures profiles, and a handful of other mythological beings and creatures,
Speaker 1: including the two Knit who I mentioned in a recent
Speaker 1: Monster Fact episode. Wow. All right, so I mentioned the
Speaker 1: ice making sounds. So I want to move on now
Speaker 1: to the topic of what is known as ice shove. Now,
Speaker 1: this is more of a clear example of weird ice,
Speaker 1: or rather ice behaving in a way that many myths
Speaker 1: might think of as weird. Though for a number of
Speaker 1: you out there, ice shove is just a reality, potential
Speaker 1: reality of the winter months. I was reading about this
Speaker 1: in Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams, and he mentions there's a
Speaker 1: whole passage where he's talking about like long stillness broken
Speaker 1: by sudden moves as sort of a hallmark of Arctic landscapes,
Speaker 1: and he ties this also into just like a sense
Speaker 1: of patience that is also that he observed as being
Speaker 1: present in native populations and indigenous peoples. But he cites
Speaker 1: an example of this ice shove concerning the breaking of
Speaker 1: both river ice and sea ice, and for river ice.
Speaker 1: Lopez describes it as follows, quote pistol reports of cracking
Speaker 1: on the river, and then the sound of breaking branches
Speaker 1: and the whining pop of a falling tree. Is the
Speaker 1: careening blocks of ice gouge the river banks. And he
Speaker 1: describes the sea ice variation as follows quote Suddenly, in
Speaker 1: the middle of winter and without warning, a huge piece
Speaker 1: of sea ice surges hundreds of feet inland like something alive,
Speaker 1: and he cites the inopiat word ivu. I hope I'm
Speaker 1: pronouncing that right. My apologies for any mispronunciations on these terms.
Speaker 1: And it is also as ice shove. I've also seen
Speaker 1: it referred to as ice tsunamis, along with a number
Speaker 1: of other English names. Ice shoves are generally classified as
Speaker 1: onshore ice pushes caused by wind currents, changes in temperature,
Speaker 1: and other causes. As meteorologist Matthew Capucci explained it in
Speaker 1: a twenty twenty Washington Post article, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of explainers out these out there that often pop up
Speaker 1: when exceptional or notable examples of ice shoves occur, and
Speaker 1: this I believe is one of those cases. This meteorologists
Speaker 1: pointed out that as the wind blows over a long
Speaker 1: sheet of ice, it can give that sheet of ice
Speaker 1: enough momentum that it can't stop when pushed against the shore. Instead,
Speaker 1: it fragments, and then the fragments pile up in heaps
Speaker 1: of shattered ice on the coast. Conditions have to be
Speaker 1: just right. The ice has to be thin enough, it
Speaker 1: has to be brittle enough, and it generally only piles
Speaker 1: up a few feet onto the shore. But there are
Speaker 1: of course exceptional examples where things get much higher, or
Speaker 1: they go up the shore a little bit more. Apparently
Speaker 1: some places are more ideal for it. I saw Lake
Speaker 1: Erie pointed out in this article due to its length
Speaker 1: and particular orientation. And again there's some pretty exceptional examples.
Speaker 1: In June of twenty eleven, along the Chuck Chisea coast
Speaker 1: in Alaska, ice shove piled up fifteen feet, and I've
Speaker 1: seen it record heights as high as like forty feet
Speaker 1: in some cases. So that's like a forty foot wall
Speaker 1: of ice fragments piling up along the coast.
Speaker 3: Yikes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And Lopez's ice shove measurements here Seaman keeping with
Speaker 1: the measurements I'm seeing in twenty twenty and ice shove
Speaker 1: on Lake Winnebago was, according to NBC twenty six out
Speaker 1: of Northeastern Wisconsin quote, a couple of hundred feet long
Speaker 1: and taller than the supper club itself. What does that
Speaker 1: quote mean? I'm taking it out of context. The article
Speaker 1: had this a foot of the ice shove piled up
Speaker 1: next to Jim and Linda's Lake Shore supper club in
Speaker 1: the town of Pipe. Appears to be like a single
Speaker 1: floor building. But still that is a lot of ice.
Speaker 1: Like that's a huge wall of moving ice or I
Speaker 1: mean it's no longer moving, but you know, still it
Speaker 1: has moved up, it has advanced in a way that
Speaker 1: is concerning.
Speaker 3: The supper club is threatened. They're gonna get ice in
Speaker 3: their hot dish.
Speaker 1: Oh man. Wow.
Speaker 3: So I looked up a few pictures of this, and
Speaker 3: it is alarming because, yeah, you can see cases where
Speaker 3: I guess these are lakeside houses where the ice is
Speaker 3: just shoved right up against the house like you're saying,
Speaker 3: happen to the supper club here, and in some cases
Speaker 3: shoved into the house and apparently causes damage, like you know,
Speaker 3: busts the wall or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so I you know, I guess It's the
Speaker 1: kind of thing where you had observed it and you
Speaker 1: knew that it can kind of occur. Suddenly you you
Speaker 1: might have that in your mind when can try to
Speaker 1: convince the children not to play too close to the
Speaker 1: ice sometimes, though it also seems like a rare it's
Speaker 1: not so regular in occurrence that it really would happen
Speaker 1: all of the time. And coming back to our point earlier,
Speaker 1: there are a number of other more common things that
Speaker 1: could be dangerous about the ice and the ice at
Speaker 1: the edge of the coast. Or of course, even when
Speaker 1: the ice is melted like the water's edge can still
Speaker 1: be dangerous, especially to a young child.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, I mean there's plenty of danger just from
Speaker 3: falling in.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, another interesting ice related phenomena I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about here. There's less to this, and this one
Speaker 1: will be kind of quick, I guess, but I ran
Speaker 1: across this idea of ice blink. It's not so much
Speaker 1: a property of the ice itself, but rather an optical interaction.
Speaker 1: It's essentially a glare in the sky over an ice field,
Speaker 1: though not to be confused with various other various actual
Speaker 1: forms of mirages, such as the fata Morgana, which we've
Speaker 1: discussed in the show before. These are also found in
Speaker 1: the Arctic, and there's an entire chapter in Lopez's book
Speaker 1: Arctic Dreams where he talks about this, about the Northern
Speaker 1: lights and so forth. But basically, ice blink is just
Speaker 1: the bright white reflection in the clouds above an expanse
Speaker 1: of ice. So if you're at sea in the Arctic
Speaker 1: and you see ice blink in the distance and you
Speaker 1: know what you're looking at for and looking at, of
Speaker 1: course you can navigate by it, knowing that this means
Speaker 1: that there's likely a large expanse of ice in that direction. Likewise,
Speaker 1: the opposite is true with water sky. So if you're
Speaker 1: on a great expanse of ice and the overcast sky
Speaker 1: is bright with reflected light, you might see a dark
Speaker 1: patch of sky in the distance that indicates a body
Speaker 1: of open water beneath it. So in other words, it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's the presence of dark clouds over an
Speaker 1: area of open water in a region that is otherwise frozen.
Speaker 1: And this this is you know, these are signs that
Speaker 1: indigenous peoples would have known about and used to navigate,
Speaker 1: and and techniques that would then would have been adopted
Speaker 1: by individuals exploring from other parts of the world. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of some of some of what we discussed
Speaker 1: in our episodes about Pacific navigation and how there are
Speaker 1: signs that the informed mind could look for in the
Speaker 1: sky that would indicate the presence of an island.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. So listeners, if you haven't heard, we
Speaker 3: did a series of while back on yeah, techniques of
Speaker 3: navigation used by Pacific island peoples to make long sea
Speaker 3: voyages without modern instruments and stuff like that, and it's
Speaker 3: amazing how much information you can actually get from things
Speaker 3: like the stars, sea currents, birds and things like that
Speaker 3: that the untrained eye would never understand to interpret as
Speaker 3: relevant information about where the position of an island was
Speaker 3: relative to you. But that was truly one of the
Speaker 3: most mind blowing series I think we've ever done, because
Speaker 3: it just opened my eyes to the fact that there
Speaker 3: is so much information in the world that can be
Speaker 3: exploited if you know what to look for, and to
Speaker 3: a person who doesn't know what to look for, it's
Speaker 3: completely invisible. You'd have no idea that it corresponded to
Speaker 3: any kind of navigationally relevant facts.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Yeah, it's such a fascinating topic.
Speaker 3: And anyway, yeah, this is another thing like that. I
Speaker 3: never would have thought of this, but this is very
Speaker 3: interesting navigating by the reflection of the surface color of
Speaker 3: a landscape over the horizon as it reflects on the
Speaker 3: clouds in the sky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because to the untrained eye, you would just think, O,
Speaker 1: dark cloud in the distance. There's a white clouds in
Speaker 1: the distance. But yeah, to know what it means, we
Speaker 1: can give you vital information about where you're going.
Speaker 3: Now, speaking of the color of ice and of sea ice,
Speaker 3: this brings me to something I wanted to talk about today,
Speaker 3: which is the color of icebergs. I was thinking about
Speaker 3: how most icebergs of court, most icebergs and sea ice
Speaker 3: and ice sheets you see are basically white in color.
Speaker 3: But occasionally I will see photos of icebergs that have
Speaker 3: streaks or whole surfaces that are other colors, maybe blue
Speaker 3: icebergs that look very beautiful and strange, and I wonder
Speaker 3: what makes the difference there, So I looked into this
Speaker 3: a little bit. Now, most icebergs are indeed white in color,
Speaker 3: but of course sometimes icebergs of other colors can be found, apparently,
Speaker 3: especially coming off of Antarctica, and we can talk about
Speaker 3: reasons for that. But the white, relatively opaque surface of
Speaker 3: a common iceberg is caused by how ice accumulates, which
Speaker 3: is by adding layers of snow. In most cases, so
Speaker 3: icebergs typically begin as part of a glacier or a
Speaker 3: polar ice sheet, which eventually breaks off in pieces and
Speaker 3: floats away in the ocean. So it originally formed along
Speaker 3: with the rest of the glacier. And the way that
Speaker 3: forms is snow falls down from the sky, it piles up,
Speaker 3: it gets compressed, and if it doesn't melt seasonally, more
Speaker 3: snow falls on top of it and just keeps piling
Speaker 3: up and getting more and more compressed until it forms
Speaker 3: this solid chunk or sheet of ice. This process can
Speaker 3: become cumulative over many snowfalls, many seasons, many years, and
Speaker 3: eventually it forms this glacier, and then a piece of
Speaker 3: this glacier or ice sheet can break off and float
Speaker 3: away in the water. So what determines the difference in color, Well,
Speaker 3: when you see a white iceberg, what you're seeing there,
Speaker 3: apparently is the relatively uncompressed upper or outer layers of
Speaker 3: the snowpack that is forming the ice on top of
Speaker 3: it that relatively uncompressed snow contains lots of little imperfections
Speaker 3: like air bubbles especially, and just lots of little reflective
Speaker 3: surfaces within the relatively low density outer layers, and these
Speaker 3: little imperfections and air bubbles and things tend to scatter light.
Speaker 3: They reflect all frequencies of light equally, and of course
Speaker 3: when you combine all colors of light, you get white light,
Speaker 3: so that light bounces off and it appears white to
Speaker 3: our eyes. But when you're making a glacier, as each
Speaker 3: layer of ice becomes more deeply buried in a glacier
Speaker 3: or iceberg, it gets pressed harder by the layers above.
Speaker 3: Some new snowfalls, the ice load above it becomes heavier,
Speaker 3: and the imperfection tend to get squeezed out, like air
Speaker 3: bubbles get compressed and removed. The ice crystals that were
Speaker 3: originally snowflakes get squeezed and they form larger crystals of
Speaker 3: dense ice. So this dens or more compressed ice does
Speaker 3: not reflect all frequencies of light equally. Instead, it starts
Speaker 3: to behave in a different way. It absorbs some wavelengths,
Speaker 3: especially longer wavelengths toward the red end of the spectrum
Speaker 3: colors like red, orange, and yellow, whereas shorter wavelengths on
Speaker 3: the green, blue, indigo, violet into the spectrum are less
Speaker 3: likely to be absorbed and more likely to bounce back out.
Speaker 3: So if you see an iceberg that looks opaque white
Speaker 3: on the outside, it is probably covered with snow or
Speaker 3: uncompressed surface ice, or ice that has been weathered and
Speaker 3: scratched up in some way. If you see an iceberg
Speaker 3: that looks a more cloudy blue, you're probably seeing the exposed,
Speaker 3: compressed layers of ice from an older glacier or from
Speaker 3: deep in inside the glacier formation. And sometimes icebergs also
Speaker 3: look blue and a bit more translucenter even transparent when
Speaker 3: they somehow capsize in the water, bringing up the smoother
Speaker 3: blue portion that was once under the waterline. And there
Speaker 3: are also some other formation methods for blue spectrum and
Speaker 3: translucent bergs, and frankly, with these they look not only beautiful,
Speaker 3: but downright shocking. Rob I've attached a couple of examples
Speaker 3: for you to look at here, and it's almost beyond words.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this looks like a potential fragment of an amazing
Speaker 1: airbrush mural on the side of a Van from the
Speaker 1: late seventies early eighties, that it is somehow ended up
Speaker 1: in the Arctic. It's like it has that much. It's
Speaker 1: like marbled looking as well, like it's just amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is like held in the hand of an
Speaker 3: airbrush wizard. I think, I don't know, breathing smoke on
Speaker 3: it or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, to see ice really looking blue, you don't actually
Speaker 3: have to look for an iceberg floating in the water
Speaker 3: that has flipped over. Somehow. You can see this, for example,
Speaker 3: in cracks and crevasses, in ice sheets and glaciers. I
Speaker 3: dug up some pictures for you to look at here, Rob,
Speaker 3: but if you look this up at home, you can
Speaker 3: see it for yourself. Look up like glacier crevasse. Often
Speaker 3: the way it will appear is that the top layer
Speaker 3: is opaque white like we're used to seeing. You know,
Speaker 3: where the snow has been piled on. But if you're
Speaker 3: able to look down into the crack, you will see
Speaker 3: progressively bluer and bluer shades, like the light coming out
Speaker 3: is a deeper blue the deeper you go down. And
Speaker 3: again this is a result of that ice being more compressed.
Speaker 1: And the blue can look just quite dark to like
Speaker 1: to the untrained eye, you would almost think artificially blue. Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: what happened to this glacier? What kind of toilet water
Speaker 1: was transformed into this glacier? Now?
Speaker 3: I was reading about this in an article for Scientific
Speaker 3: American by Catherine Wright called icebergs can be green, black, striped,
Speaker 3: or even rainbow. And one of the things this article
Speaker 3: mentions is it cites an expert named Daniella Janssen who
Speaker 3: is a geophysicist at the Alfred Wegner Institute for Polar
Speaker 3: and Marine Research in Germany, and this researcher talks about
Speaker 3: a different iceberg formation process, which is the direct freezing
Speaker 3: of sea water leading to the creation of marine ice. So,
Speaker 3: according to Jansen, this kind of ice can build up
Speaker 3: underneath ice shelves, and an ice shelf is where part
Speaker 3: of a land based glacier extends past dry land and
Speaker 3: juts out over the sea, So it's like a shelf
Speaker 3: over the water. And under the ice shelves of Antarctica,
Speaker 3: actual frozen seawater can agglomerate into formations that can eventually
Speaker 3: become icebergs. Whereas the snow that falls layer by layer
Speaker 3: and accumulates into a glacier on land is mostly pure water.
Speaker 3: Ice that accumulates by the freezing of sea water, which
Speaker 3: is more rare, comes with a lot of stuff in it.
Speaker 3: So because it's seawater, right, so it can have mineral
Speaker 3: dust and just you know, grains of rocks and various
Speaker 3: kinds of minerals that can bring different colors to a
Speaker 3: resulting iceberg that comes from the freezing of the seawater.
Speaker 3: Maybe it has a lot of iron particles in it,
Speaker 3: or maybe it has black looking you know, volcanic lava minerals.
Speaker 3: It can also have a lot of dead stuff in it,
Speaker 3: dead or living organic matter. And apparently marine ice that
Speaker 3: forms this way out of seawater with a lot of
Speaker 3: dead cells from organic matter can tend to be yellow
Speaker 3: or green in color. And so if you're ever seeing
Speaker 3: yellow or green icebergs, especially coming from around Antarctica, because
Speaker 3: these types of marine ice iceberg, they tend to form
Speaker 3: only in very cold conditions because again they have to
Speaker 3: be formed out of seawater. Seawater, having greater salt content,
Speaker 3: is harder to freeze than fresh water. So basically all
Speaker 3: of this like multicolored ice made out of seawater only
Speaker 3: forms around Antarctica. Anything from the Arctic North will typically
Speaker 3: be white or blue. This marine ice that forms around
Speaker 3: Antarctica sometimes has these like gross amazing you know, like
Speaker 3: green jade or yellow death colors, and a lot of
Speaker 3: this tends to be organic contaminants. Meanwhile, marine ice that
Speaker 3: forms underneath these ice shelves but doesn't have much in
Speaker 3: the way of contaminants tends to be very translucent or
Speaker 3: even almost transparent, appearing you can see deep into it.
Speaker 3: This is where you get these these strange looking bergs
Speaker 3: that are almost as clear as glass and a very
Speaker 3: dark color, almost a deep blue or even a black.
Speaker 3: You can also get striped icebergs, and this happens when
Speaker 3: you have an ice shelf hanging out over the ocean
Speaker 3: and cracks form along the submerged portion, and these areas
Speaker 3: can flood with seawater, forming stripes of different colors and
Speaker 3: opacity than the surrounding ice. So maybe you've got some
Speaker 3: ice that's you know, the regular sort of blue ice,
Speaker 3: and then it fills in with some marine ice from
Speaker 3: seawater that had a bunch of dead organic matter in it,
Speaker 3: so it might have like stripes of yellow or stripes
Speaker 3: of green. But I want to move on to another
Speaker 3: iceberg related topic, which is icebergs beyond Earth. So you
Speaker 3: might kind of wonder, well, how could that even be possible,
Speaker 3: because we know that Earth is the only planet in
Speaker 3: the Solar System with liquid water oceans on the surface.
Speaker 3: Other planets may have had them long ago in the past,
Speaker 3: but not today. We do know that there are some
Speaker 3: some other objects, some moons in the Solar System that
Speaker 3: have liquid oceans underneath the surface, like Jupiter's moon Europa.
Speaker 3: But there is one other object in the Solar System
Speaker 3: that does have liquid seas and lakes and rivers on
Speaker 3: its surface, though they are not made out of water.
Speaker 3: That space object is Saturn's moon Titan, which is Saturn's
Speaker 3: largest moon, the second largest moon in the whole Solar
Speaker 3: System after Jupiter's Ganymede, and the only moon in the
Speaker 3: Solar System with a dense atmosphere, which is made mostly
Speaker 3: of nitrogen and is in fact extremely thick. The atmospheric
Speaker 3: pressure on the surface of Titan is about fifty or
Speaker 3: sixty percent greater than the pressure at sea level on Earth.
Speaker 3: So one comparison I've come across is that just standing
Speaker 3: in the air on the surface of Titan would feel
Speaker 3: kind of like it would be a level of pressure
Speaker 3: similar to being fifteen meters or fifty feet underwater on Earth.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, that's thick. Titan is also extremely cold, with
Speaker 3: an average surface temperature of one hundred and eighty three
Speaker 3: of a negative one hundred and eighty three degrees celsius
Speaker 3: or negative two hundred and ninety seven degrees fahrenheit. That's
Speaker 3: really cold. Of course, that is too cold to support
Speaker 3: liquid water on the surface. It is not going to
Speaker 3: have water oceans. But nevertheless, Titan does have large stable
Speaker 3: systems of rivers, lakes, and seas made out of not water,
Speaker 3: but liquid hydrocarbons, especially liquid methane, ethane, and some liquid nitrogen.
Speaker 3: So methane is a hydrocarbon that we know here on
Speaker 3: Earth as well chemical formula H four. On Earth, it's
Speaker 3: pretty much always in the form of a gas. Ethane,
Speaker 3: another hydrocarbon, is C two H six, and together methane
Speaker 3: and ethane contribute to a kind of atmospheric chemical cycle
Speaker 3: on Titan that has some resemblances to but also some
Speaker 3: differences from the water cycle on Earth. So, like methane
Speaker 3: is released apparently from deep inside the interior of Titan,
Speaker 3: and then it forms a sort of weather system. It
Speaker 3: gets broken down by sunlight in the upper atmosphere and
Speaker 3: there are there is some kind of methane or methane
Speaker 3: downstream product weather system where you know, these these organic
Speaker 3: molecules fall down from above, so you get like rains
Speaker 3: and snows that have these hydrocarbon features. So one of
Speaker 3: the consequences of this wet hydrocarbon environment is a surface
Speaker 3: with snaking rivers and massive lakes of liquid hydrocarbons, especially
Speaker 3: clustered around the Moon's polar regions. So the three largest
Speaker 3: of these hydrocarbon seas in order of are Kraken, mare
Speaker 3: Lygia Mara, and Punga Mara, which are all situated around
Speaker 3: the Moon's north pole. Mythology notes, by the way, I
Speaker 3: think we know the kraken, but the Punga is the
Speaker 3: name of a being in Maori mythology who is a
Speaker 3: son of the sea deity Tangaroa, but also the father
Speaker 3: of all creatures considered strange and ugly, including lizards and sharks.
Speaker 3: Ligia was the name was a name that appeared in
Speaker 3: Greek mythology in multiple contexts, but always associated with minor
Speaker 3: sea deities like the Nereids or the Sirens, and also
Speaker 3: in a creepy Edgar Allan Poe short story where I
Speaker 3: think the deal is Ligia was the narrator's wife and
Speaker 3: she died, and then he marries another woman and then
Speaker 3: she dies but then resurrects from the dead as his
Speaker 3: first wife, Ligia.
Speaker 1: This would be the tomb of Ligia, right.
Speaker 3: I think so. And that's the one that has the
Speaker 3: poem the Conqueror Worm.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And there was a Vincent Price adaptation of
Speaker 1: this one to some time. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So anyway, you've got these Maria, these these seas or lakes,
Speaker 3: I don't know what the you know, whether you want
Speaker 3: to call them sees or lakes. The biggest one, I
Speaker 3: think has been compared roughly to the size of the
Speaker 3: Caspian Sea on Earth. I think, Likegia Mara I've seen
Speaker 3: compared roughly to the size of Lake Superior. But whatever,
Speaker 3: however we classify them. These bodies of liquid hydrocarbons on
Speaker 3: Titan were documented extensively through radar imaging carried out by
Speaker 3: the Cassini mission orbiter over a period of many years
Speaker 3: in the in the two thousands, and twenty tens. So
Speaker 3: I wanted to zoom in on some of these different
Speaker 3: radar images of Legimra, the second largest sea on Titan,
Speaker 3: and these photos were taken at intervals between two thousand
Speaker 3: and seven and twenty fifteen. Rob, I've got these for
Speaker 3: you to look at here. So what we see appears
Speaker 3: to be a sort of flower shaped peninsula of land
Speaker 3: jutting out into the sea and off of one of
Speaker 3: the petals of this flower of land. There is a mystery.
Speaker 3: In the image from two thousand and seven, the land
Speaker 3: terminates and there's just nothing but dark lake beyond it.
Speaker 3: Then in an image from twenty thirteen, suddenly there is
Speaker 3: what appears to be an island off the same coastal feature.
Speaker 3: Then in another image from twenty fourteen, the island seems
Speaker 3: to have faded into just a wisp of discoloration, something
Speaker 3: that looks like it could be you know, I'm using
Speaker 3: too much of an Earth analogy here, but it looks
Speaker 3: like it could be like an atoll, or like a
Speaker 3: bank of shallows. And then by twenty fifteen, the island
Speaker 3: has vanished completely and only the dark liquid remains once more.
Speaker 3: What the heck or how is the topography of Titan
Speaker 3: changing like that are islands appearing and disappearing on this
Speaker 3: alien c So these types of anomalies have been referred
Speaker 3: to in the press as the magic islands of Titan,
Speaker 3: since they seem to appear and disappear when we're not looking,
Speaker 3: and it's still not known for sure what they are,
Speaker 3: but there are some ideas, some proposals. You would need
Speaker 3: something that would be present long enough to have a
Speaker 3: reasonable chance of being caught in images taken by the orbiter,
Speaker 3: but also something that would disappear completely within a couple
Speaker 3: of years. So there have been various suggestions, including floating
Speaker 3: hydrocarbon solids like particles that have fallen from the atmosphere,
Speaker 3: maybe a sort of carbon based dust floating on the lake,
Speaker 3: or perhaps massive upwellings of nitrogen gas bubbles appearing as
Speaker 3: bright spots on the radar image. But just recently in
Speaker 3: January twenty twenty four, a group of researchers suggested another possibility,
Speaker 3: which is hydrocarbon icebergs, basically pourous honeycomb like frozen masses
Speaker 3: of hydrocarbons. So the paper in question here is by
Speaker 3: zenting Uau, Julia Garver, Xi Jiang and Patricia Migugen. It's
Speaker 3: called the Fate of simple organics on Titan's surface, a
Speaker 3: theoretical perspective published in Geophysical Research Letters. So the authors
Speaker 3: here are saying, in the atmosphere of Titan, you've got
Speaker 3: these simple compounds like methane that get broken down, maybe
Speaker 3: by exposure to sunlight, and they recombine and end up
Speaker 3: transformed into bigger, more complex organic molecules. And many of
Speaker 3: these carbon based compounds freeze solid and fall to the surface.
Speaker 3: Now what happens when these hydrocarbon ices fall on the
Speaker 3: surface of Titan's lakes. It seems that most of them
Speaker 3: probably sync to the bottom, becoming new layers of lake
Speaker 3: bed sediment. Because remember it's peculiar to water that frozen
Speaker 3: water floats on the surface of liquid water. Most frozen
Speaker 3: solids increase in density and would be likely to sink
Speaker 3: in liquid, but not all frozen hydrocarbons would sink. The
Speaker 3: author's right quote, imagine a sponge full of holes. If
Speaker 3: the solids are like this, with twenty five percent to
Speaker 3: sixty percent of their volume being empty space, they can float.
Speaker 3: Some solids, like hydrogen cyanide ice can also float due
Speaker 3: to surface tension effects, and I was reading. In a
Speaker 3: press release, the lead author UT San Antonio planetary scientist
Speaker 3: Zinting Yu has compared these icebergs to the way that
Speaker 3: porous volcanic pummice can float on the surface of oceans
Speaker 3: on Earth before eventually becoming saturated and sinking. So in
Speaker 3: this paper, the authors created a model of how various
Speaker 3: materials would behave on the lake surface, and they concluded
Speaker 3: that it wouldn't work unless conditions were just right. But
Speaker 3: if they were right, it would work. You could have
Speaker 3: these floating icebergs of hydrocarbons. So to read from the
Speaker 3: press release summary, quote used modeling suggested individual clumps are
Speaker 3: likely too small to float by themselves, but if enough
Speaker 3: clumps mass together near the shore, larger pieces could break
Speaker 3: off and float away, similar to how glaciers calve on
Speaker 3: Earth calving. They're referring to yeah parts of a glacier
Speaker 3: breaking off and falling into the water. The press release continues,
Speaker 3: with a combination of a bigger size and the right porosity,
Speaker 3: these organic glaciers could explain the magic island phenomenon. So
Speaker 3: the issue is not settled. This is yet another proposal
Speaker 3: for what it could be to explain these magic islands
Speaker 3: in the radar images. But I kind of hope this
Speaker 3: explanation has proven right because I love the idea of
Speaker 3: icebergs on Titan. Maybe that would like warn us away
Speaker 3: from the humorous of trying to launch a Titanic on
Speaker 3: the lakes of Titan. I don't know, But then again,
Speaker 3: I guess if they're very porous and honeycomb like, maybe
Speaker 3: they wouldn't or represent much of a threat to boat.
Speaker 3: So I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Well, this is this is fascinating. Yeah, I had not
Speaker 1: thought about you know, obviously the topic of ice and
Speaker 1: oceans and water on other worlds and moons within our
Speaker 1: Solar system has coming before, but I had not looked
Speaker 1: at this idea of giant honeycomb glaciers. Potentially this is
Speaker 1: This is fascinating, But to be clear, not an alien
Speaker 1: space ship.
Speaker 3: No reason to think so. I think we would we
Speaker 3: would exhaust the I don't know, planetary science explanations before
Speaker 3: turning to alien technology.
Speaker 1: It's probably telling that the press latched onto the term
Speaker 1: magic islands yet like it kind of maybe even too
Speaker 1: much of a stretch to say, is this is this
Speaker 1: is an alien spaceship? Now at best Magic Island.
Speaker 3: Well, I have no inclination to think it's the spaceship,
Speaker 3: but I still do find that just the idea of
Speaker 3: surface features appearing and disappearing on the Lakes of Titan
Speaker 3: very very spooky and fascinating.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, all right, well, we're gonna go ahead and close
Speaker 1: out this episode. Obviously there's there's so much more regarding
Speaker 1: ice we could cover. I don't we haven't decided yet.
Speaker 1: If we're doing a third ice episode, we may go
Speaker 1: on to some other topic. But potentially we could come
Speaker 1: back to ice in the future if that's the case,
Speaker 1: because just in Lopez's book, I mean, he has whole
Speaker 1: stretches where he's talking about like different types of ice
Speaker 1: and the behavior of ice, and when of course indigenous
Speaker 1: beliefs and traditions concerning ice. There's a lot we could cover.
Speaker 1: And and likewise, we know a lot of you out there.
Speaker 1: You have direct experience with ice in ways that we don't.
Speaker 1: You may have takes on some of the things we've
Speaker 1: discussed here, observations, traditions, et cetera. We would love to
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